SPACE/COSMOS
Wed, October 23, 2024
FILE PHOTO: The Chang'e 6 lunar probe and the Long March-5 Y8 carrier rocket combination sit atop the launch pad at the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan province
By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NASA and Chinese officials are engaged in talks to let American scientists analyze rocks retrieved by China from the moon's far side, according to the head of the U.S. space agency, as Washington pursues improved communication with Beijing on issues involving space.
China in June became the first country to collect rock samples from the permanently dark side of the moon's surface, a demonstration of its growing prowess in space. Chinese officials offered the material to the world's scientists for study, but publicly mentioned a U.S. law that limits cooperation by NASA with China.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said officials with his agency have been discussing with their Chinese counterparts the terms of Beijing's loan agreement for the moon rocks after he assured American lawmakers "a month or two ago" that the talks would not pose national security concerns.
"We are now going through further clarification" with China, Nelson told Reuters at the International Astronautical Congress, a gathering of the world's space agencies, in Milan.
Nelson said he thinks the talks will end "positively," with China agreeing to provide access to the samples.
China's uncrewed Chang'e-6 spacecraft returned to Earth on June 25 carrying the moon samples. Chang'e-6 earlier had landed on the moon's South Pole-Aitken Basin, an impact crater on the side of the moon that always faces away from Earth.
The discussions on access to the rocks are among a handful of ongoing exchanges between the United States and China on space issues even as the countries continue to compete for military and economic dominance in space. They are the world's two biggest space powers and two biggest economies.
Officials from multiple U.S. government agencies in the past year have embarked on delicate efforts to engage with China to establish areas of coordination and communication in space, according to three U.S. officials involved in the talks, speaking on condition of anonymity. This represents a shift in U.S. strategy toward China's space program that is aimed at avoiding miscalculations in future space operations, they said.
U.S.-Chinese scientific cooperation has been criticized in recent years by some U.S. lawmakers focused on the military rivalry between the two nations. In August, President Joe Biden's administration let a decades-old science and technology agreement with China expire. The two countries are now negotiating over whether to renew it.
Diplomacy on space has long been deterred by a 2011 U.S. law called the Wolf Amendment, named after now-retired U.S. congressman Frank Wolf, that was passed by Congress to ensure that American technologies stay out of the hands of China's military. Under this law, NASA must work with the FBI to certify to Congress that any such talks with China would not threaten U.S. national security.
Space has become an increasingly contested arena, charged by the rise of Elon Musk's U.S.-based company SpaceX and a resurgence in interest by governments in expanding satellite communication networks and space exploration.
ENGAGEMENT WITH THE PENTAGON
China this year stepped up its engagement with the Pentagon and various U.S. agencies on its space activities, from rocket launch notifications to the timing of its satellite reentries into Earth's atmosphere, Stephen Whiting, the commander of the U.S. military's Space Command, told Reuters.
"China had done this episodically, but not like they're doing now," Whiting said. "I think the more they operate in space, the more value they probably see on mechanisms to increase safety."
Some space companies and scientists have voiced concern that U.S.-Chinese military and economic tensions could jeopardize a new era of satellite communications and exploration missions in space, including sending astronauts to the moon and later possibly to Mars.
Under NASA's Artemis program, the United States intends in the coming years to return astronauts to the moon for the first time in five decades.
China aims to land its own astronauts in roughly the same lunar region as Artemis by 2030. It also has started deploying constellations of thousands of low Earth-orbiting satellites that will fly near SpaceX's Starlink and Amazon's future Kuiper network. These developments add urgency to the longstanding goal of U.S. space officials to set global standards for space traffic management.
U.S. officials have criticized China's practice of allowing expandable first-stage rocket boosters to fall to Earth in rural China, risking the lives of villagers, and expressed frustration in August when a Chinese rocket stage broke apart in space, creating one of the largest fields of debris in recent history.
RARE TALKS
The moon rock talks represent a rare instance of contact between the two rivals in recent years.
NASA officials exchanged data with their Chinese counterparts in 2021 to avoid possible collisions between their robotic spacecraft orbiting Mars. NASA and U.S. State Department officials last year held brief talks with their Chinese counterparts regarding China's first lunar sample mission, Chang'e-5, which in 2020 brought to Earth moon rocks from its sunlit side.
The rocks retrieved by Chang'e-6 from the moon's far side may give researchers insight into how the lunar surface could be exploited for resources to sustain long-term astronaut missions and moon bases within the next decade.
Roughly four U.S. universities have applied for access to the Chang'e-6 samples, according to Nelson. Some of them are believed to have been accepted through the science review phase of China's application process, according to Clive Neal, a University of Notre Dame professor who has been involved in efforts to gain access to moon samples obtained by China.
NASA is awaiting Chinese clarification on the terms of the loan agreement, according to two people familiar with the discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity. One of the sources also said some U.S. officials are hesitant about a potential agreement because it could weaken the U.S. posture of toughness toward China.
Nelson said he expects NASA to have to work with the FBI for another certification on national security to Congress to enable any moon rock deliveries to U.S. universities for research.
"When you actually start getting cooperation, you get an enduring space program," Neal said. "Science diplomacy should not be underestimated."
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Will Dunham)
China says foreign spies trying to steal space program secrets
Wed, October 23, 2024
FILE PHOTO: A Long March-2F carrier rocket carrying the Shenzhou-18 spacecraft takes off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center
By Farah Master
HONG KONG (Reuters) - China's state security ministry said foreign spy intelligence agencies have been trying to steal secrets from the country's space programme as the arms race in space intensifies and emerges as a new "battlefield for military struggle".
Safeguarding space security had become a key strategy for China's future survival and development, the ministry said in a post on its official Wechat account on Wednesday."In recent years, some Western countries have formed space combat forces, exercised space action capabilities and even regarded (China) as a major competitor in the space field," it said.
Foreign spy intelligence agencies had also conducted remote sensing detection against China through high-precision satellites, intending to observe and steal secrets from China from space.
It did not name any specific countries but said some had "carried out infiltration and stealing activities in China's aerospace field".
High-precision satellites had emerged as a focus in modern warfare, with their importance a highlight in Russia's war on Ukraine where real-time and ultra-detailed images would offer substantial leverage in the battlefield.
Competition for space resources was becoming "increasingly tense", space exploration faced a shortage of orbital and spectrum resources, and abandoned satellites and rocket debris increased the risk of collisions.
China’s lunar strategy includes its first astronaut landing around 2030 in a programme that counts Russia as a partner. In 2020 China conducted its first lunar sample return mission with Chang'e-5, retrieving samples from the moon's nearer side.
In June, China landed an uncrewed spacecraft on the far side of the moon, overcoming a key hurdle in its landmark mission to retrieve the world's first rock and soil samples from the dark lunar hemisphere.
Its space agency has set 2035 as the date by when a "basic station" on the moon's south pole will be built, with a moon-orbiting space station added by 2045.
(Reporting by Farah Master; additional reporting by Ryan Woo and the Beijing newsroom; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Euclid telescope reveals 1st section of largest-ever 3D map of the universe — and there's still 99% to go
On the top left, an all-sky map is visible with the location of Euclid’s mosaic on the Southern Sky highlighted in yellow. In the middle, there is a graphic of the galaxy showing cloudy starry shapes. On the right, there are close-ups of various features.
RELATED STORIES
—Our entire galaxy is warping, and a gigantic blob of dark matter could be to blame
—Dark matter's secret identity could be hiding in distorted 'Einstein rings'
—James Webb telescope reveals 3 possible 'dark stars' — galaxy-size objects powered by invisible dark matter
Researchers think dark matter and dark energy together make up about 95% of the universe. But they do not interact with light, so they can't be detected directly.
Instead, scientists study the mysterious components by observing the way they interact with the visible universe around them: Dark matter can be seen by observing its gravitational warping effects on galaxies, and dark energy is evident in the force propelling the universe's runaway expansion.
So far, 12% of Euclid's mission has been completed. Further releases, including a preview of Euclid's Deep Field areas, are planned for release in March 2025, and the mission's first year of cosmology data will appear in 2026.
Wed, October 23, 2024
FILE PHOTO: A Long March-2F carrier rocket carrying the Shenzhou-18 spacecraft takes off from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center
By Farah Master
HONG KONG (Reuters) - China's state security ministry said foreign spy intelligence agencies have been trying to steal secrets from the country's space programme as the arms race in space intensifies and emerges as a new "battlefield for military struggle".
Safeguarding space security had become a key strategy for China's future survival and development, the ministry said in a post on its official Wechat account on Wednesday."In recent years, some Western countries have formed space combat forces, exercised space action capabilities and even regarded (China) as a major competitor in the space field," it said.
Foreign spy intelligence agencies had also conducted remote sensing detection against China through high-precision satellites, intending to observe and steal secrets from China from space.
It did not name any specific countries but said some had "carried out infiltration and stealing activities in China's aerospace field".
High-precision satellites had emerged as a focus in modern warfare, with their importance a highlight in Russia's war on Ukraine where real-time and ultra-detailed images would offer substantial leverage in the battlefield.
Competition for space resources was becoming "increasingly tense", space exploration faced a shortage of orbital and spectrum resources, and abandoned satellites and rocket debris increased the risk of collisions.
China’s lunar strategy includes its first astronaut landing around 2030 in a programme that counts Russia as a partner. In 2020 China conducted its first lunar sample return mission with Chang'e-5, retrieving samples from the moon's nearer side.
In June, China landed an uncrewed spacecraft on the far side of the moon, overcoming a key hurdle in its landmark mission to retrieve the world's first rock and soil samples from the dark lunar hemisphere.
Its space agency has set 2035 as the date by when a "basic station" on the moon's south pole will be built, with a moon-orbiting space station added by 2045.
(Reporting by Farah Master; additional reporting by Ryan Woo and the Beijing newsroom; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Euclid telescope reveals 1st section of largest-ever 3D map of the universe — and there's still 99% to go
Ben Turner
Wed, October 23, 2024
Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA; ESA/Gaia/DPAC; ESA/Planck Collaboration
The first piece of what will one day be the largest-ever 3D map of the universe has been revealed, and it's crammed with 14 million galaxies.
The snapshot was taken by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid space telescope. Launched on July 1, 2023, Euclid was designed to compile wide-lens images to help scientists hunt for two of the universe's most mysterious components: dark matter and dark energy.
The stunning new image is a mosaic of 208 gigapixels, representing just a fraction of a percent of the sky. By capturing hundreds of images like this one, the space telescope will eventually catalog one-third of the entire night sky and image more than a billion galaxies that are up to 10 billion years old, according to ESA.
"This stunning image is the first piece of a map that in six years will reveal more than one third of the sky," Valeria Pettorino, a Euclid project scientist at ESA, said in a statement. "This is just 1% of the map, and yet it is full of a variety of sources that will help scientists discover new ways to describe the Universe."
Related: Mysterious 'Green Monster' lurking in James Webb photo of supernova remnant is finally explained
The released image is a mosaic of 260 observations collected across two weeks between March and April 2024. It represents a 132-square-degree sweep of the southern sky that is more than 500 times the area of the full moon.
The map, which contains 100 million sources of light, is just one small piece in the cosmic jigsaw puzzle being assembled by Euclid. Upon completion, it will enable scientists to probe the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.
Wed, October 23, 2024
Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA; ESA/Gaia/DPAC; ESA/Planck Collaboration
The first piece of what will one day be the largest-ever 3D map of the universe has been revealed, and it's crammed with 14 million galaxies.
The snapshot was taken by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid space telescope. Launched on July 1, 2023, Euclid was designed to compile wide-lens images to help scientists hunt for two of the universe's most mysterious components: dark matter and dark energy.
The stunning new image is a mosaic of 208 gigapixels, representing just a fraction of a percent of the sky. By capturing hundreds of images like this one, the space telescope will eventually catalog one-third of the entire night sky and image more than a billion galaxies that are up to 10 billion years old, according to ESA.
"This stunning image is the first piece of a map that in six years will reveal more than one third of the sky," Valeria Pettorino, a Euclid project scientist at ESA, said in a statement. "This is just 1% of the map, and yet it is full of a variety of sources that will help scientists discover new ways to describe the Universe."
Related: Mysterious 'Green Monster' lurking in James Webb photo of supernova remnant is finally explained
The released image is a mosaic of 260 observations collected across two weeks between March and April 2024. It represents a 132-square-degree sweep of the southern sky that is more than 500 times the area of the full moon.
The map, which contains 100 million sources of light, is just one small piece in the cosmic jigsaw puzzle being assembled by Euclid. Upon completion, it will enable scientists to probe the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.
On the top left, an all-sky map is visible with the location of Euclid’s mosaic on the Southern Sky highlighted in yellow. In the middle, there is a graphic of the galaxy showing cloudy starry shapes. On the right, there are close-ups of various features.
RELATED STORIES
—Our entire galaxy is warping, and a gigantic blob of dark matter could be to blame
—Dark matter's secret identity could be hiding in distorted 'Einstein rings'
—James Webb telescope reveals 3 possible 'dark stars' — galaxy-size objects powered by invisible dark matter
Researchers think dark matter and dark energy together make up about 95% of the universe. But they do not interact with light, so they can't be detected directly.
Instead, scientists study the mysterious components by observing the way they interact with the visible universe around them: Dark matter can be seen by observing its gravitational warping effects on galaxies, and dark energy is evident in the force propelling the universe's runaway expansion.
So far, 12% of Euclid's mission has been completed. Further releases, including a preview of Euclid's Deep Field areas, are planned for release in March 2025, and the mission's first year of cosmology data will appear in 2026.
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